Speaker 1: The club expects their golf proth and their assistant pros
Speaker 1: to make sure everything's perfect.
Speaker 2: We want a club prow that can play like Tiger,
Speaker 2: teach like butch merchandise like Ralph Lauren, and tell jokes
Speaker 2: like Bob ho Right.
Speaker 3: It is absolutely The problem is the amount of pay
Speaker 3: for the amount of work does a.
Speaker 4: Mesh for clubs.
Speaker 5: If you don't make these changes, you're not going to
Speaker 5: get the people you want.
Speaker 6: Your product is going to suffer.
Speaker 7: People are not going to want to come play there,
Speaker 7: They're going to go elsewhere, and you're eventually going to
Speaker 7: go out of business.
Speaker 1: Is seth while helping He's the right guy in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat, But is there a vehicle he can drive
Speaker 1: that can make it any better?
Speaker 8: People are put on earth to make everybody's lives better, right, Like,
Speaker 8: how can he not want to be surrounded by those people?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 8: And And that's what our PGA professional is. You know,
Speaker 8: it's not perfect, We're not perfect times far from perfect.
Speaker 6: We're moving the needle, making a.
Speaker 8: Lot of progress and I hope people are noticing it.
Speaker 6: But that's not the point either, right. The point is
Speaker 6: leaving the room better. And I'm going to keep fighting
Speaker 6: to do that every day. Put another log on the fire.
Speaker 6: Nobody here is to get the time.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the fire Pit with Matt Chanella. Always good
Speaker 4: to be back around this fire pit. Needless to say,
Speaker 4: it has been a tumultuous few months trying to sort
Speaker 4: out the future of the fire Pit Collective. We've reorganized
Speaker 4: the business, sharpened the strategy and got refocused on travel shows,
Speaker 4: the Ambush of Buddies, trips, chronicling course developments, renovations and restorations.
Speaker 4: We'll be announcing some upcoming events and we'll continue producing
Speaker 4: more of these podcasts. And thus i'd like to thank
Speaker 4: our sponsors. First link so the lifestyle brand I've worn
Speaker 4: on and off the course for over ten years, Polos
Speaker 4: T shirts, pants, shorts, hoodies and hats. Go to linksoul
Speaker 4: dot com right now and use promo code fire Pit
Speaker 4: twenty five for twenty five percent off your next purchase.
Speaker 4: And then there's Robin Golf, the company who designs clubs
Speaker 4: to give the widest range of players the most success
Speaker 4: playing golf. Ideal for kids and beginners, the club faces
Speaker 4: have a larger sweet spot, which means more forgiveness and
Speaker 4: who doesn't like more forgiveness. Go to robindolf dot com
Speaker 4: today and shop their sleek line of men's, women's, and
Speaker 4: kids clubs. Okay, for some deep context as it relates
Speaker 4: to this podcast, I grew up in and around golf,
Speaker 4: playing at Oakmont in Santa Rosa, California. We lived nearby.
Speaker 4: My uncle and my dad played at Oakmont, so did
Speaker 4: all of their friends. I eventually got jobs there picking
Speaker 4: the range, parking carts, changing grips. I did whatever they
Speaker 4: asked me to do. The head pro at the time,
Speaker 4: Dean James was tough on me and everyone on his staff.
Speaker 4: He played mind games, broke you down, so he was
Speaker 4: the one who could build you back up. Compliments were rare.
Speaker 4: I watched as he manipulated his assistants, pitted them against
Speaker 4: each other, etc. Most of his assistants, who were all
Speaker 4: great to me, moved through the shop after a year
Speaker 4: or two. Some found other clubs, others found other industries.
Speaker 4: I was never a big Dean fan, and my dad
Speaker 4: and uncle kind of felt the same way. But Dean
Speaker 4: was dug in managed the membership a lot better than
Speaker 4: he did the people who worked for him. I eventually
Speaker 4: got a job on the Oakmont maintenance crew working for
Speaker 4: the superintendent Mike Clark, who was the opposite of Dean.
Speaker 4: Mike Clerk was humble, quiet, appreciative of hard work. He
Speaker 4: was approachable, fair, and had integrity. His staff stayed with
Speaker 4: him for years. Some still might be there. In a way,
Speaker 4: I guess I owe my career and go off to
Speaker 4: both Dean James and Mike Clark. It was Dean who
Speaker 4: pushed me into agronomy. It was Mike who hired me.
Speaker 4: Then it was Dean the summer after I graduated from
Speaker 4: Saint Mary's College in Northern California, who took away free
Speaker 4: golf for the Oakmont maintenance staff. It was the fact
Speaker 4: that I would need to start paying for my golf
Speaker 4: at the course I helped maintain that made me willing
Speaker 4: to take the job of driving my parents furniture from
Speaker 4: Santa Rosa across the country to New York. My dad,
Speaker 4: as an engineer for Bechtel Power, was going to consult
Speaker 4: on the renovation of the JFK Airport. I loaded up
Speaker 4: the moving truck and basically never came back. Upon arriving
Speaker 4: on the East Coast, and as I looked into applying
Speaker 4: at Penn State's agronomy school, I landed the internship at
Speaker 4: Sports Illustrated. The rest continues to be my history. Cut
Speaker 4: to September of last year, I was asked to be
Speaker 4: a guest on the Tie podcast hosted by Walker Semus.
Speaker 4: Walker and I had a good talk about my life
Speaker 4: in golf, the industry in general. We talked about the
Speaker 4: fire Pit Collective and he asked what I was most
Speaker 4: excited about. I explained to him the concept of the
Speaker 4: Grind docuseries we were working on chronicling the lives of
Speaker 4: the dreamers, the mid level professionals who push all in
Speaker 4: on themselves and their talents. And then I exposed my
Speaker 4: ignorance as it related to the lives and lifestyles of
Speaker 4: club pros. Here again is the fifty two second bite
Speaker 4: from the fifty minute conversation, which Walker circulated on Twitter
Speaker 4: to promote his podcast. Why is a PGA professional who
Speaker 4: can barely break eighty but works a prettily traditional workweek
Speaker 4: make one hundred and fifty thousand or two hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars a year being a pro? When a pro who
Speaker 4: breaks seventy every time they tee it up is going
Speaker 4: backwards and losing eighty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 6: If not more.
Speaker 4: There is a flaw in this system. The pros who
Speaker 4: can barely break eighty, who passed some sort of written
Speaker 4: test and a playing test and wants to call himself
Speaker 4: herself a pro, is a pro and they're making a
Speaker 4: good living being a pro when the pros who are
Speaker 4: a master's at their craft are losing eighty to one
Speaker 4: hundred thousand dollars. To your point, what's wrong with this picture?
Speaker 4: Knowing what I know now, having had conversations with experts
Speaker 4: and insiders to hear what I said that day is embarrassing.
Speaker 4: To compare one profession or professional to the other makes
Speaker 4: no sense. They are two very different jobs. And for
Speaker 4: that to all the club pros and PGA pros out
Speaker 4: there selflessly and thanklessly giving so much to the development
Speaker 4: and growth of this game we all love. I said
Speaker 4: it before, but I'll me say it again. I am sorry.
Speaker 4: I've been well aware of the crisis as it relates
Speaker 4: to the agronomy of golf. Clubs can't find good supers,
Speaker 4: Supers can't find good assistance, and there's definitely a shortage
Speaker 4: when it comes to people willing to work long hours
Speaker 4: for not a lot of pay. I was not aware
Speaker 4: of that same crisis as it pertains to PGA professionals
Speaker 4: and or club pros. Did that hole in my glove
Speaker 4: have anything to do with Dean James and the way
Speaker 4: he treated me and the staff who worked for him.
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe that impacted my bias, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: The fact is I've benefited from good club pros my
Speaker 4: whole life. How many places have I played thousands? How
Speaker 4: many tournaments have I played in countless? How many lessons
Speaker 4: have I had? Never enough? Having processed the flood of
Speaker 4: backlash and having reflected on my mistake, I've produced the
Speaker 4: upcoming series of podcasts in an effort to try and
Speaker 4: help their cause. In this series, you'll hear from several
Speaker 4: current and former PGA pros, and I get their perspectives
Speaker 4: on the industry in general, the past, the president, and
Speaker 4: the future. I also spoke to Butch Harmon, a legend
Speaker 4: in the industry obviously, but whose dad and brothers were
Speaker 4: also all club and teaching pros. I speak to Chandler Withington,
Speaker 4: the former head pro at Hazeltine, Rick Riley, the head
Speaker 4: pro at Wiltshire Country Club for the last thirty years
Speaker 4: and whose dad was a former president of the PG
Speaker 4: of America. I spoke to Shane Ryan, who authored a
Speaker 4: story titled the Club Pro Crisis, which appeared in Golf
Speaker 4: Digest almost exactly a year ago. I speak to Susie Whaley,
Speaker 4: who in twenty eighteen became the first female president of
Speaker 4: the PGA of America. And I spoke to Seth Waw,
Speaker 4: the CEO of the PG of America since twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: who is doing everything he can to improve a rather
Speaker 4: bleak reality. We start with Withington, a former assistant at
Speaker 4: Seminole and Marian before landing the head pro job at
Speaker 4: Hazelteene in twenty thirteen. He helped host the Ryder Cup
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen and had another one coming in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty nine, but in twenty twenty one he walked away
Speaker 4: from the job to pursue his passion for architecture and
Speaker 4: design and applied it to intricate art and specifically golf posters, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, are incredible. This first section of the
Speaker 4: pod is on the reaction to my SoundBite from the
Speaker 4: TAI podcast.
Speaker 2: So somebody who messaged me and they said, hey, do
Speaker 2: you hear what Matt Chanellos said about club pro or
Speaker 2: like matic a shot at club pros. He's getting roasted
Speaker 2: right now. And I said, where is it? And so
Speaker 2: it's this podcast. So I'm the kind of person and
Speaker 2: I get into a lot of this conversation where I said, like,
Speaker 2: all right, just I'll listen to the pod and I'll
Speaker 2: form my own opinion. Don't tell me what to think.
Speaker 6: I'll listen to it.
Speaker 2: So what I listened to it like I heard the
Speaker 2: point you made you were talking about to her professional life.
Speaker 2: There are a lot more people that can shoot, There
Speaker 2: are a lot more great players, and the system is
Speaker 2: broken because how can these guys struggle to make a living,
Speaker 2: But yet you have club pros that over time our
Speaker 2: playing ability has gone dramatically down, and now the majority
Speaker 2: of us can't break eighty be we're making a very
Speaker 2: comfortable living. That was the point I heard. And it's
Speaker 2: not inaccurate, right, It's not accurate for everyone, right, So
Speaker 2: that's what some people took offense to. Either I don't
Speaker 2: make one hundred and fifty K or I can't wreak part.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you'll have time to rectify all that. I
Speaker 2: think what you're doing is like anytime that we say something,
Speaker 2: we're in this like cancel culture of like I can
Speaker 2: cancel Janelle. He said something I don't like or agree with, Like, no,
Speaker 2: let's let's do what you're doing, saying, Look, I said
Speaker 2: something that obviously works some people, so I want to
Speaker 2: understand it more and I want to understand your perspective
Speaker 2: and then you know, let's continue the conversation and like
Speaker 2: we all know, like Twitter is not the place for that, right.
Speaker 4: A lot more from Chandler throughout this series. For now
Speaker 4: meet Cody Sinkler, director of golf operations at the Park
Speaker 4: in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaker 7: Initial reaction was to be candid, a little offended, and
Speaker 7: I just thought it didn't quite it was a little
Speaker 7: out of touch and meaning the mention of club pros
Speaker 7: making the salary.
Speaker 6: You mentioned.
Speaker 7: Those club pros are what I would consider to be
Speaker 7: the one percent at the top of their profession, you know,
Speaker 7: the Rory McElroy's of our profession. They're still working fifty
Speaker 7: sixty seventy hour weeks likely most of them are. So
Speaker 7: it was a little bit I found it to be.
Speaker 7: I don't want to be harsh, but it felt a
Speaker 7: little offensive, just because I don't quite feel like and
Speaker 7: I definitely have made it to a pretty high level
Speaker 7: in my profession, I believe I don't quite like a
Speaker 7: I guess we'll call it an aspiring mini tour player
Speaker 7: who easily handle me on the golf course could step
Speaker 7: into my role and cecar make.
Speaker 6: It to me.
Speaker 7: It just based that they're a better player than me.
Speaker 7: That was kind of my impression.
Speaker 4: And here's Josh Doxeter, general manager at Harbor Shores Resort
Speaker 4: in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
Speaker 5: Oh, I just I thought it was just a complete
Speaker 5: disservice to the PGA professional, you know. And I think
Speaker 5: there's a lot of people that think it's they don't
Speaker 5: have a real understanding of what the job looks like
Speaker 5: and what it takes to actually be successful in the
Speaker 5: game of golf. From a business side of things, there's
Speaker 5: no question that we have a ton of lazy PGA
Speaker 5: professionals out there who give the brand maybe a bad
Speaker 5: rap in some sense. But I you know, I've been
Speaker 5: in the business over fifteen almost twenty years now, and
Speaker 5: I've seen so many come and go, but there's only
Speaker 5: a very select few that really have what it takes
Speaker 5: to I would say, carry the torch and pass it
Speaker 5: on to future generations. You know, we've had twenty eight
Speaker 5: thousand PJ professionals for three or thirty years. You know
Speaker 5: that number has not moved, and it's on a decline
Speaker 5: right now. You know, the talent level that I see
Speaker 5: coming in from an apprentice side of things is lacking significantly.
Speaker 5: And you know, the ones who do make it are
Speaker 5: the ones who truly have a passion and love for
Speaker 5: the game. And I would suggest that a majority of
Speaker 5: those that are in or who have become PJ professionals
Speaker 5: were dreamers. That's that's where they started. That's how I started.
Speaker 5: I started playing young competitively young. I wanted so badly
Speaker 5: play on the PGA Tour. But if you don't have
Speaker 5: time and money and resources, you have no chance. And
Speaker 5: you know, I learned that quickly, and then I invested
Speaker 5: everything I had into the business side of golf because
Speaker 5: I love the game that much and I want to
Speaker 5: be around it and I can't imagine doing anything else.
Speaker 5: So I think, you know, when I heard the clip,
Speaker 5: and then just some of the other things in regard
Speaker 5: to wages and then work week and things like that.
Speaker 5: You know, there's no question that there's some guys that
Speaker 5: are in positions where they play a lot of golf,
Speaker 5: they get paid well for it, they take care of
Speaker 5: their membership. But there's and I would say that's the
Speaker 5: less than ten percent of those golf professionals or PG professionals,
Speaker 5: you know, and anybody who's who's really gone through and
Speaker 5: went through the program and the business. You know, it's
Speaker 5: it's seventy eighty hour work weeks, it's a thirty thousand
Speaker 5: dollars salary. It's a grind, you know. I know, I
Speaker 5: came up in Phoenix area, and you know, eleven months
Speaker 5: out of the year you're cooking, and although it slows
Speaker 5: down in the summer, you don't stop. And you know,
Speaker 5: six days a week in at six thirty am, go home,
Speaker 5: try to have dinner with the wife, but my newborn
Speaker 5: son to bad go back until nine or ten o'clock
Speaker 5: at night. And you know, that was one of the
Speaker 5: reasons why I transitioned out of Phoenix to a colder climate,
Speaker 5: because I needed some sort of change in the off
Speaker 5: season in order to you know, be able to actually
Speaker 5: be a part of my family.
Speaker 4: And then there's Kieran Kanwar of Mumbai, India. She's been
Speaker 4: in the United States since two thousand and five. She
Speaker 4: has a PhD in kinesiology. She's an LPGA Master instructor,
Speaker 4: and she's the chair of the golf department at Stanton
Speaker 4: University in Orange County, California. Her thesis was on types
Speaker 4: and causes of swing related injury. She's been teaching for
Speaker 4: thirty three years. When I solicited feedback on my comment
Speaker 4: from club pros on Twitter, like several others throughout this series,
Speaker 4: she offered to participate.
Speaker 9: A lot of club pros protest that, oh, that's not fair.
Speaker 9: I didn't I just saw a tiny clip of your
Speaker 9: recording where you're saying that the players have more, you know,
Speaker 9: don't get as good a deal as I don't know
Speaker 9: if you mentioned the club pros in reference to that,
Speaker 9: but yeah, there's all sorts of club pros, and I
Speaker 9: mean to say that we all deserve to do better
Speaker 9: is like saying that an ad shooter deserves to be
Speaker 9: on a tour. You know, everybody thinks they deserve more,
Speaker 9: but do they really deserve more? And is there any
Speaker 9: harm in actually, you know, putting up your frank opinions
Speaker 9: on social media. As long as it's not, you know,
Speaker 9: harming anyone in any way, what's wrong with that? So
Speaker 9: I thought I'd add my little two bit and say that, Hey,
Speaker 9: I mean, if you're talking of club pros, look at
Speaker 9: some of us, brown skinned females who have more credentials
Speaker 9: than most men on this planet in golf, and yet
Speaker 9: don't even get a foot in the door, leave alone,
Speaker 9: work twelve hours a day and big compensated minimally, you know,
Speaker 9: So what are you guys talking about?
Speaker 4: Thanks again to all who provided the very frank and
Speaker 4: enlightening feedback. The fact is, the job of the club pro,
Speaker 4: especially since the days of Dean James at Oakmont in
Speaker 4: Santa Rosa, has changed significantly. For the start of a
Speaker 4: section on the history of the job, we go back
Speaker 4: to Chandler Withington.
Speaker 2: Here's how I would summarize the history of like the
Speaker 2: club professional to a professional like and they do segment
Speaker 2: at some point, So you go all the way back
Speaker 2: to like eighteen fifties, early eighteen hundreds, like first club
Speaker 2: professionals like Alan Robertson's old Tom Morris, clubmakers, ballmakers, superintendents,
Speaker 2: course architects. You know, they built these places, right, they
Speaker 2: were the jack of all trades and that's what the
Speaker 2: game was. And they weren't even considered like members. They
Speaker 2: were amateurs, right, Not really until they started the Open
Speaker 2: Championship in eighteen sixty did they start to recognize who
Speaker 2: these people were. Right, you know what nine players in
Speaker 2: the first Open et cetera. Right, fast forward to nineteen
Speaker 2: sixteen we formed the PGA of America. But look at
Speaker 2: like who the first like club professionals were. You had
Speaker 2: like Walter Hagen, right, you know at of go Kill
Speaker 2: or Oakland Hills. And what was their first responsibility was?
Speaker 2: They were to teach people how to play the game.
Speaker 2: The rules were just being formed. It was the wild
Speaker 2: wild West of like how you want to.
Speaker 6: Play the game.
Speaker 2: They were trying to uniform the game. And that's what
Speaker 2: the club professional's role was. Was to teach people how
Speaker 2: to play the game, not just how to play shots,
Speaker 2: but how to play the game, how to score penalties,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Right, I think Walter Hagen was really like
Speaker 2: the first advocate of getting professionals, you know, in the
Speaker 2: clubhouse in Iverness in nineteen twenty, Right. You know, when
Speaker 2: I look at the black and white Hogan pick Mine
Speaker 2: is a little different. I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 2: this version before.
Speaker 6: I'll flip it.
Speaker 2: But at the bottom there is like the score panel
Speaker 2: where you know it's got the scores. You know, Ben
Speaker 2: Hogan won four thousand dollars in nineteen fifty. But my
Speaker 2: favorite part of it is at list every club that
Speaker 2: they were attached to. You know, So Ben was the
Speaker 2: pro at Hershey, Claude Harmon was at Wingfoot, Henry vCard
Speaker 2: is at Canterbury, you know, down the road, right, every
Speaker 2: one of these guys playing in a national championship. When
Speaker 2: the Open was done, they went back and started teaching
Speaker 2: lessons again at a club.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: Jack and Arnie come along in nineteen sixty, and that's
Speaker 2: when like tour life started to sustain itself to where
Speaker 2: you know, Jack and Arnie were club professionals. That's really
Speaker 2: when it started to shift. Golf started getting on TV,
Speaker 2: person started going up, and there was a traveling tour, right,
Speaker 2: which of course they tried to take over from b Namon.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: But then you get into like I think about people
Speaker 2: like in the nineteen eighties, like I'm sure you had
Speaker 2: a chance to meet RJ Harper at Pebble Beach to
Speaker 2: show you, like what the demand on was pros back then.
Speaker 2: R J remembody told me, he goes, oh, I made
Speaker 2: I made decision that I was going to get into golf.
Speaker 2: So I said, I'm going to go to the best
Speaker 2: place there is to do it, as Pebble Beach.
Speaker 6: I think RJ was from.
Speaker 2: Florida and he drove across the country, showed up a
Speaker 2: Pebble He goes, Sam, RJ. Harper, I'm here to work
Speaker 2: what you have for me and so you can work
Speaker 2: in the back room. But within two years RJ was
Speaker 2: the director of golf the Pebble Beach like was not
Speaker 2: a highly regarded, high sought after job in that era.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at Lou Warsham handed the keys to
Speaker 2: Bob Ford in nineteen eighty ProGMA. Now you'd have, you know,
Speaker 2: two thousand pros trying to line up for a job
Speaker 2: like that. You know, merchandise didn't start the Masters until
Speaker 2: like eighty six, and by the time that Jack won
Speaker 2: logos merchandise that you know, you sold the clubs and
Speaker 2: golf balls until like the mid eighties. So what all changed?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: You know where did this start to Spike Eldrick, right,
Speaker 2: you know, nineteen ninety seven Tiger and then you know, look,
Speaker 2: I went to a PGM school. I started in ninety six.
Speaker 2: I think in ninety six there were a handful of
Speaker 2: PGM schools. It got up to as many as you know,
Speaker 2: I think over twenty at some point, and now it's
Speaker 2: it's coming back down, like Clemson just closed. So in
Speaker 2: the nineties when Tigers started coming in, you had the
Speaker 2: prob one coming in two thousand r seven from Tailor
Speaker 2: May came in two thousand and four, and I you know,
Speaker 2: my internships in early job as a pro is watching this,
Speaker 2: like Spike go like this, and then all the demands
Speaker 2: of our time go along with it, and you had
Speaker 2: pros that primarily again we were teaching and playing, you know,
Speaker 2: merchandising in our business, and the size of our staffs
Speaker 2: and the service level and courses are getting built all
Speaker 2: over across America. It just it went like this, right,
Speaker 2: So let's look at like where we are today, like
Speaker 2: teaching the game, you know, and now you seem to
Speaker 2: to a segment off of like if you really want
Speaker 2: to teach the game, you've become a full time teacher.
Speaker 2: You know at Hazel Team we had two full time teachers.
Speaker 2: Teaching didn't become so much a part of my job.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: The club professional now is viewed so much more of
Speaker 2: as an administrator, a business mindset, a host overseeing hospitality.
Speaker 2: But really it's the size of our staff, the size
Speaker 2: of our sales, the number of events, the expectation on service.
Speaker 2: And now you get this term that came up, you
Speaker 2: know sometime I think in the mid nineties, like director
Speaker 2: of golf, right, which director golf was always meant to be.
Speaker 2: They oversee everything, you know, from down to like the
Speaker 2: superintendent the whole facility was a director, But the term
Speaker 2: really kind of gets abused, right. So that's my kind
Speaker 2: of like three minute synopsis of like how do we
Speaker 2: go from like Alan Robertson to to you know who
Speaker 2: you know, Devin Gee at Oakmont today and like how
Speaker 2: is their job changed and evolved?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: But I think like people, I'll constantly tell you, like,
Speaker 2: you know, when it comes to club professionals, like the
Speaker 2: expectations now is like we want a club prow that
Speaker 2: can play like Tiger teach like butch merchandise like Ralph
Speaker 2: Lauren and tell jokes like bob op right, like should
Speaker 2: be able to do it all.
Speaker 6: And that's a big.
Speaker 4: Ask on the subject of butch and the history of
Speaker 4: the profession more than mister Harmon, Oh mat, how are
Speaker 4: you this whole thing has been has been a part
Speaker 4: of your life. What's kind of your general sense of
Speaker 4: the evolution of what it used to be to sort
Speaker 4: of what it is now.
Speaker 6: Well, if you look.
Speaker 1: At let's go back at my father's day, wait, way back,
Speaker 1: saying in the forties, even into the fifties, the tour
Speaker 1: was kind of a half a year type of thing.
Speaker 1: So tour players would become Cup pros and work half
Speaker 1: the year in different parts of the country, and then
Speaker 1: when the tour started up, they'd go play. And that's
Speaker 1: how my father started out, you know. He played the
Speaker 1: tour and then he became an assistant pro to Craig
Speaker 1: would at Wingfoot, and then a year later Craig would
Speaker 1: left wing Foot and.
Speaker 6: My father became the pro there for thirty three years.
Speaker 6: Whatever it was back in those days, cut pro was
Speaker 6: everything at the Cup.
Speaker 1: He owned the pro shop, he on the back room,
Speaker 1: wasn't paid a huge salary, he did the teaching, He
Speaker 1: was a good instructor, a good player, nice merchandiser, a
Speaker 1: person that ran all the tournaments and stuff.
Speaker 6: You moved forward into.
Speaker 1: Say my era, I turned pro in six before I
Speaker 1: went to Vietnam. But when I came home from Vietnam
Speaker 1: and the end of sixty six, you know, I became
Speaker 1: an assistant pro wing foot and so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: just like everybody else does. But we were around a
Speaker 1: business that's totally The person who was the director golfer
Speaker 1: or head golf pro, whatever you want to call him,
Speaker 1: totally ran golf at the clubs. They ran everything. They
Speaker 1: ran the tournaments. Yes, there were committees, but they ran them.
Speaker 1: The head pro and the staff ran all of that.
Speaker 1: That's changed now, and it's changed because of the way
Speaker 1: things are. I don't know how we got to where
Speaker 1: we are club pros in general. And I'm not putting
Speaker 1: down a cut pro because I was one. My brothers
Speaker 1: were all one. But the industry has become more clerks now,
Speaker 1: more shirt and hat salesmen, and then they have a
Speaker 1: guy that can teach and the guy that this or that.
Speaker 1: It's not the one man show that he used to
Speaker 1: be back in the days. I mean, my father was
Speaker 1: so far ahead of himself that I mean when he
Speaker 1: was at wing Put in the summer Seminole in the winter,
Speaker 1: he made more money than the leading moneyware on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour in those days. And that's why he didn't
Speaker 1: play full time. He just played in the majors. But
Speaker 1: Dad was ahead of himself. He's one of the first
Speaker 1: to start putting logos on shirts. He used like an
Speaker 1: eight millimeters camera to take film of students and stuff.
Speaker 1: He always wore an elastic belts that could take it
Speaker 1: off and.
Speaker 6: Wrap it around your arms when he was teaching and stuff.
Speaker 6: So he was just ahead of himself.
Speaker 1: I look at the modern day club prow and I
Speaker 1: think what I would call the original style old golf pros.
Speaker 6: You know, look at Bob Ford.
Speaker 1: Who was at oakmontin Seminole, a great player, great teacher,
Speaker 1: great great mentor to assistance. My brother Craig was the
Speaker 1: same at oak Hill, was there for forty one years.
Speaker 1: Those kind of guys don't exist anymore. It's not the
Speaker 1: type of pro Darryl Kessler out on Long Island is
Speaker 1: still a person like that. I would say if we
Speaker 1: look at club pros in general, the metropolitan area in
Speaker 1: New York probably has the biggest configuration of club head
Speaker 1: pros in the country. Chicago District might be second, but
Speaker 1: I think the met section is the biggest, and they
Speaker 1: have a small version of the way it used to be.
Speaker 6: Some of them.
Speaker 1: Mike Gilmore, for example, at Wingfoot is a great player,
Speaker 1: great teacher, great merchandiser, great club pro. We don't see
Speaker 1: that a lot anymore. I go back and I look
Speaker 1: at the ones who have retired, like my brother Craig,
Speaker 1: my brother Dick unfortunately who passed away, Ricky Roadse at
Speaker 1: San Francisco Golf Club. These are guys that their whole
Speaker 1: life has been spent at one club, that they've done
Speaker 1: everything for. That. We don't see that anymore. Pros tend
Speaker 1: to jump around at different jobs here and there, here
Speaker 1: and there. The old days, when you've got a good job,
Speaker 1: you just stayed there forever and the members treated you
Speaker 1: like them.
Speaker 6: Remember you were great with them.
Speaker 1: And so I think what's evolved now is the club's
Speaker 1: known all the amenities they owned, the pro shops they own,
Speaker 1: the carts they owned, the backrooms they owned, the driving ranges.
Speaker 1: Pros are paid a salary and a little percentage of stuff.
Speaker 6: So it's a.
Speaker 1: Different incentive world for guys to get into business.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: The people said to you all the time, well, you've
Speaker 1: been a golf pro your whole life. When you were
Speaker 1: a club pro, you must have played a lot of golf. No,
Speaker 1: not really. You're always working. You work every holiday, you
Speaker 1: work every weekend. It's a hard job. Now you have
Speaker 1: corporations own these clubs. They got the pros punching time clocks.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: Well, HR says you can only work forty hours a week. Well, heck,
Speaker 1: we being a golf pro my whole life, I turned
Speaker 1: probe to sixty five. We worked the sun when the
Speaker 1: sun was up, we worked when the sun went down,
Speaker 1: and we went home. That's not the way it is anymore.
Speaker 1: It's a totally different environment. I'm not saying it's good
Speaker 1: or bad. I'm just saying it's not the one that
Speaker 1: I grew up in and the one I lived in.
Speaker 4: Bob Ford, Ricky Rhodes, and here's Rick Riley, director of
Speaker 4: golf at Wiltshire Country Club in Los Angeles. He's the
Speaker 4: son of Pat Riley, the legendary past president of the
Speaker 4: PG of America. Between father, who was a member of
Speaker 4: the Association for fifty five years and son who's been
Speaker 4: a member for over thirty years. They have over ninety
Speaker 4: years of combined service to the game of golf.
Speaker 10: So he got into it, you know, he was you know,
Speaker 10: he and my mom, you know, went to Penn State,
Speaker 10: I loped, moved out. He's in the Marine Corps nineteen
Speaker 10: fifty eight to sixty one, and he when he get
Speaker 10: out of the Marine Corps, he's the stationed in Camp
Speaker 10: Pendlan and he went to work for a guy named
Speaker 10: Rags Raglan who ran Circlear golf course. Circulars were Ashley
Speaker 10: grew up and all that. We played our first unear tournament.
Speaker 10: So he was there for about a year and a
Speaker 10: half and then this position opened up at al Camino
Speaker 10: in nineteen sixty two and he was there for about
Speaker 10: ten years. And then Annandale and Pasena came calling. They
Speaker 10: wanted pat Riley. Pat you know, my dad was a
Speaker 10: good player. He was, you know, well rounded golf professional,
Speaker 10: ran a good operation golf shop. I could play, I
Speaker 10: could teach. Went to Annandale, was there in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 10: got involved with the PGA of America. Initially, he he
Speaker 10: kind of was blackballed.
Speaker 6: He didn't. He don't.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he so how can I how can I play
Speaker 10: in these tournaments? Well, you know he was playing while
Speaker 10: he was winning tournaments. Said you got to go back
Speaker 10: and do your school.
Speaker 6: Anyway.
Speaker 10: He got answered, Listen, I'm going to make sure when
Speaker 10: I get back, I'm going to make sure it's right
Speaker 10: for everybody. So his whole thing with the PGA was
Speaker 10: it was all about the little guy taking care of
Speaker 10: the little guy, making sure all the rank and file
Speaker 10: members you know, had had access, had a better path
Speaker 10: for their future, for their benefits financially, you know, spiritually,
Speaker 10: that whole thing. So he was there from seventy two
Speaker 10: to two thousand and two. He retired in two thousand
Speaker 10: and two. And I actually I was working at Allahois
Speaker 10: Country Club, got out of got out of school at
Speaker 10: U of A and eighty three. I worked for Pete
Speaker 10: co who actually worked for my dad. Was there for
Speaker 10: three years and I was actually go to work for
Speaker 10: my dad and Anadale and this whole thing kind of
Speaker 10: open up at Wilsher Game an assistant pro there for
Speaker 10: about six months. And Frank Morrik been there for twenty
Speaker 10: five years and he retired and I got in the
Speaker 10: finals of the interview for the head job, and I
Speaker 10: got it, and I was twenty six years old and
Speaker 10: I'm still here at thirty thirty five years later.
Speaker 4: How have you seen this kind of role evolve over
Speaker 4: decades of time?
Speaker 10: Here, I think I think the bottom line is, and
Speaker 10: this is pretty harsh. I mean, the club pros are
Speaker 10: givers to c tur pros are takers. I'm not saying
Speaker 10: that's that's I mean, give a lot of our time.
Speaker 10: We're promoting the game, and they listen to tour pros.
Speaker 10: They can play great, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 10: it's like, do they really have time for you? When
Speaker 10: you know they'll they'll throw a clinic up there, it's like, oh,
Speaker 10: they're not. They're not the one given the clinics. It's
Speaker 10: it's the rank and file guys like myself and the
Speaker 10: twenty eight thousand PGA professionals that are really promoting the
Speaker 10: game of golf, and hey, listen, it's fun to watch
Speaker 10: these guys. These guys on tour are so good, they're
Speaker 10: so talented. And I can remember the days Ashley and
Speaker 10: I were playing golf at u of A and we're like,
Speaker 10: we go shoot seventy two seventy three, we're the best
Speaker 10: player in the team right now.
Speaker 6: Seventy two seventy.
Speaker 10: Three you can't. You can't crack the top eight, you know,
Speaker 10: so obviously I kind of call it the Tiger effect.
Speaker 10: Now there's there's better training, there's better fit. I mean,
Speaker 10: I remember I remember going asht and I go downstairs
Speaker 10: with Michale Senner. We're going to do Nautilus.
Speaker 6: There's there's fourteen guys. We go down there.
Speaker 10: We all walk in, What the hell nautilists. We're playing golf.
Speaker 6: We're not.
Speaker 10: We're not working out. This is this is this is
Speaker 10: nineteen eighty. So that's that's how much it's changed. The
Speaker 10: game has changed. It's these guys are athletes. I can
Speaker 10: remember they talked about my dad and say, well, if
Speaker 10: you're over six foot tall, it's you. You want to
Speaker 10: be five ten five. Look at all these guys on
Speaker 10: tour now that are you know, six two six three six,
Speaker 10: or they're playing golf. They they may have been basketball players,
Speaker 10: they're golf the tour pros or athletes. However, you know,
Speaker 10: twenty thousand PGA pros promoting the game of golf. I've
Speaker 10: been doing it. I kind of grew up, you know,
Speaker 10: in the business. You know, you start, you know, you
Speaker 10: start working in the cart barn, you start picking up
Speaker 10: range balls, you caddy. I mean, you just kind of
Speaker 10: grow a love for the game. I mean, you know,
Speaker 10: I go up with the caddies. Day is she's seventy five.
Speaker 10: I'm fired up. You know, left hand, I'm jack.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Riley, a righty, played at the University of Arizona. After
Speaker 4: hurting his shoulder a few years ago, he started playing
Speaker 4: as a lefty and he got down to a single
Speaker 4: digit handicap from the opposite side of the ball. Here's
Speaker 4: Cody Sinkler on the idea of givers verse takers.
Speaker 7: There are many PGA tour players, professonal golfers who have
Speaker 7: obviously given load. I mean, look at Tiger Woods of
Speaker 7: what he's giving back. But when you start that journey,
Speaker 7: you're certainly you're working for yourself. That's just how it is.
Speaker 7: We tend to sacrifice our own golf games.
Speaker 6: In order to do our job.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a reason why professional golfers are the
Speaker 7: longer club pros. There's a reason why that isn't happen.
Speaker 7: You sacrifice your own golf game. There's not time to
Speaker 7: practice and play.
Speaker 6: You just don't have it.
Speaker 7: So I would say generally yes, but there are a
Speaker 7: lot of those people, those men and women who have
Speaker 7: used that personal game to then give back sort of in.
Speaker 6: A different backwards way.
Speaker 7: But yes, we sacrifice a lot of we sacrifice our
Speaker 7: own golf game. It's sort of the first sacrificial lamb
Speaker 7: is my golf game is going to go this way
Speaker 7: so I can help take this golf course or this
Speaker 7: golf club.
Speaker 4: Back to Josh Doxetter on the same subject.
Speaker 5: I would I don't know if as go as far
Speaker 5: as say takers. You know, being in and at higher
Speaker 5: end facilities, you know, we get requests all the time,
Speaker 5: whether tour players or celebrities or things like that. And
Speaker 5: a lot of those who are trying to be up
Speaker 5: and coming on tour, you know, being here in Ben
Speaker 5: Harbor and having point of woods in the western the
Speaker 5: western end, and you know, all these different players, I
Speaker 5: would say majority of them are asking for something to
Speaker 5: use the practice facilities for free, to play golf for free.
Speaker 5: You know, some of those different things which for me
Speaker 5: as a PGA professional and a commitment to growing the
Speaker 5: game yeah, we get a lot, right, you know, we
Speaker 5: we we do whatever we can to make sure that
Speaker 5: or I do, in my opinion, everything I can to
Speaker 5: make sure that I have a future for many years
Speaker 5: to come in the game of golf, and those who
Speaker 5: are behind me who have that same or come from
Speaker 5: that same have that same opportunity as well. So I
Speaker 5: do believe that the PJ professional is a giver. They're
Speaker 5: a giver of time or a giver of resources. You know,
Speaker 5: you can you can recountless stories of how they've helped
Speaker 5: either in their communities or help the dreamers get to.
Speaker 6: Where they are.
Speaker 5: You know, I've had the opportunity to do that with
Speaker 5: a few young players as well.
Speaker 4: I'm going back to Rick Riley for the definition of
Speaker 4: what makes a good club prop You.
Speaker 10: Got to have a love for it. I mean, my
Speaker 10: dad always said, there's to be a good PGA professional
Speaker 10: you got five points. You got to be a player.
Speaker 10: You got to be a teacher, you got to be
Speaker 10: an administrator, you got to be a rules expert. Probably
Speaker 10: most important, you have to be a people person. You
Speaker 10: cannot survive on my side of the business if you
Speaker 10: don't interact with people well and take care of people.
Speaker 10: I mean, it's it's a tough business because sometimes you
Speaker 10: got to say no, and it's not easy to say no.
Speaker 10: Toe some of these people are, you know, paying fifteen
Speaker 10: hundred a month and paid one hundred and twenty thousand
Speaker 10: dollars and it's like, yeah, this is you know, we
Speaker 10: have two hundred and two hunred people on the golf course.
Speaker 10: Then I'm sorry, I can't get you out till two o'clock.
Speaker 10: But so it's a people business and that's what it
Speaker 10: boils down. You don't let people you're in the wrong
Speaker 10: side of business here, so you get a lot of guys.
Speaker 10: I'm looking at Ben hog and beg Home, one of
Speaker 10: the greatest ball strikers of all time. They call him
Speaker 10: the wii Iceman. I mean, he probably couldn't have survived
Speaker 10: in a golf shop because he didn't have the personality
Speaker 10: of the makeup, but he had the person out on
Speaker 10: the golf course that was perfect for him. So for me,
Speaker 10: that's one of the things my dad always said, Listen,
Speaker 10: it's you got to be well rounded. You can't be
Speaker 10: one dimensional. If you're just a player, you're not going
Speaker 10: to survive running a country club or a private club
Speaker 10: or a daily fear, a municipal You want to be
Speaker 10: a you want to be a five point player?
Speaker 4: Meet Robbins Manly, who became a Class A pro twenty
Speaker 4: years ago. He was an assistant pro at Breckenridge Golf
Speaker 4: Club for both decades, golf in the summer, skiing in
Speaker 4: the winter. Getting married. At the age of forty six,
Speaker 4: he left the golf industry and although he still has
Speaker 4: his PGA membership and teaches on occasion, his focus is
Speaker 4: real estate. Here are his thoughts on what it takes
Speaker 4: to be a good club pro.
Speaker 3: Right off of that is your community, your communication and
Speaker 3: your interpersonal skills with the members, are the guests, and
Speaker 3: being aware of what is going on at all times
Speaker 3: at your golf course. What is pace of play? Knowing
Speaker 3: what that is happening at all times, whether you're in
Speaker 3: the office or checking in, is what is going on
Speaker 3: at your club at all times? And being present, being active,
Speaker 3: being present, knowing the game, knowing the rules of golf,
Speaker 3: being able to teach it.
Speaker 6: You don't have to.
Speaker 3: I mean we still are better than Yeah, we joke
Speaker 3: about you know, we all shoot whatever, seventy five, seventy
Speaker 3: three whatever. That's better than most all of our members.
Speaker 3: So we can still play the game that we're not
Speaker 3: going to to the tour, but we can we can
Speaker 3: certainly play the game and teach the game and knowing
Speaker 3: all those aspects tournament operations, knowing how to run a
Speaker 3: legitimate tournament where there's not you know, handicaps that are
Speaker 3: wrong and you find out too late and in those
Speaker 3: kind of things.
Speaker 6: So it.
Speaker 3: Takes a lot of different pieces to put all together.
Speaker 3: And that's part of the reason the hours are so long,
Speaker 3: because if you want to visit and be out and
Speaker 3: visit with the people that are playing, you've got to
Speaker 3: do the tournament set up at night after everybody's gone,
Speaker 3: or if you're doing the tournament set up during the
Speaker 3: day for the next day, then you're not being seen.
Speaker 3: And so to be great it takes a lot of hours,
Speaker 3: are a bigger staff, and then the money is spread
Speaker 3: out that much more.
Speaker 9: So what is.
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer, like I said, but you know,
Speaker 3: if you had five great assistants, then you don't have
Speaker 3: to work.
Speaker 2: It's much.
Speaker 3: But where are those five assistants going to get their
Speaker 3: money from?
Speaker 4: Josh doxet Are again on his definition of a quality
Speaker 4: club pro.
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's a few different places you look.
Speaker 5: I think number one, everything's driven through the experience. So
Speaker 5: what type of experience are you delivering to numbers and
Speaker 5: guests every single day? Is that an experience through a relationship?
Speaker 5: Is that an experience through a fitting or a lesson
Speaker 5: or just conversation? You know some of those different things. So,
Speaker 5: like you said, the having being able to be a
Speaker 5: people person, be able to have conversations to you, you're
Speaker 5: your job to make everybody feel good, right, and we
Speaker 5: all know that can wear you out over time. A
Speaker 5: secondary I would just say, you know, how good are
Speaker 5: you operationally? How good are you managing what you're given?
Speaker 5: How good are you How good are you at navigating
Speaker 5: challenges and making decisions quickly so it doesn't have a
Speaker 5: major impact on your P and L at the end
Speaker 5: of the month. You know some of those, So that's
Speaker 5: the business acum inside of things. And then how good
Speaker 5: are you at coaching the people around you? How good
Speaker 5: are you at lifting them up and making sure that
Speaker 5: they have everything that they need to be successful? Because
Speaker 5: if you're going to be a leader in this industry's
Speaker 5: that's who you are. You have to lean on them
Speaker 5: as much as they lean on you, and they have
Speaker 5: to know that when you guys go to war, everybody's
Speaker 5: got each other's back.
Speaker 4: Here's Brad Sniper of Raleigh, North Carolina. He's twenty nine.
Speaker 4: He graduated from NC State in golf management. His internships
Speaker 4: were at TPC Potomac, Durrell and Sleepy Hollow. He worked
Speaker 4: at Philly Cricket Club for two summer seasons and a
Speaker 4: winter at John's Island in Florida. He spent time as
Speaker 4: a head fitter at Liberty National, and although he's still
Speaker 4: a class A professional, he's been out of the green
Speaker 4: grass aspect of the industry since twenty nineteen. He's now
Speaker 4: at Global Value Commerce, which owns Global Golf and Three Balls.
Speaker 4: He's an online club retailer. Here's his thoughts on what
Speaker 4: it takes to be a good club.
Speaker 11: It's definitely beneficial to be that well rounded professional, someone
Speaker 11: who can, you know, take missus McGillicutty out to the
Speaker 11: range for a quick lesson, you know, teach juniors, teach
Speaker 11: higher level players, and then you know, run a big tournament,
Speaker 11: run a member, guests and then still be able to
Speaker 11: head out as a fourth if someone needs you and
Speaker 11: play well enough to not embarrass yourself. So there, you know,
Speaker 11: I have with all my friends still in that side
Speaker 11: of the business. One of my closest friends he works
Speaker 11: in ash or excuse me, Fayetteville and he works for
Speaker 11: Operation thirty six. He's always wanted to be that instructor side.
Speaker 11: So if you want to kind of really narrow the focus,
Speaker 11: it's something that you have to kind of do quickly
Speaker 11: right off the bat and put everything you have into it.
Speaker 11: It's there are so many people trying to do the
Speaker 11: same thing, so it's so competitive, and especially that high
Speaker 11: end teaching side, it can it's it's a lot you
Speaker 11: really have to push yourself, especially with social media and
Speaker 11: these different avenues of people can if they if they're
Speaker 11: looking for a lesson, they can find one on their phone.
Speaker 11: So you have to really, you know, if that's your choice,
Speaker 11: that teaching side, you really have to to put one
Speaker 11: hundred and ten percent into it and kind of almost
Speaker 11: set yourself apart from the pack, give people a reason
Speaker 11: to come to you rather than so and so on
Speaker 11: YouTube or.
Speaker 6: You know, the you know the other bro down the street.
Speaker 11: So kind of go back to your question, it's definitely
Speaker 11: more beneficial to have everything to be able to touch
Speaker 11: on all those sides. But are there are only so
Speaker 11: many hours in the day, honestly, So once you get
Speaker 11: into something like that where you're kind of putting, you know,
Speaker 11: putting balls in different buckets, it's you run out of
Speaker 11: you run out of time, you run out.
Speaker 6: Of effort at some point.
Speaker 11: So yeah, to get the good jobs to move up,
Speaker 11: you really got to show you're good at everything. But
Speaker 11: at some point you have to focus a little bit.
Speaker 11: Everyone kind of has their forte, but you definitely have
Speaker 11: to be able to touch every other side.
Speaker 4: And finally, back to Kieran.
Speaker 9: Ken War, the good things are from the pros. I know,
Speaker 9: the very few pros I know that they're really good people,
Speaker 9: and they're very kindly and personable, and for a lot
Speaker 9: of people sometimes they're like your own private psychologist. You know,
Speaker 9: you have life wares, you have golf wares, and they're
Speaker 9: just nice people and they're making you feel good about yourself,
Speaker 9: which I think is where you can't sort of negate
Speaker 9: that the importance of that. You know, that's really important
Speaker 9: in its own right, that you're doing a lot of good,
Speaker 9: and then you might do some Basically you're doing a
Speaker 9: trial and error unless you know scientifically whether what you
Speaker 9: say is right or wrong. So sometimes it works and
Speaker 9: a person plays well, and that's another thing that you're
Speaker 9: doing for them. You're helping them play well. You may
Speaker 9: not always succeed, it may not work under pressure, but
Speaker 9: overall that person's game has improved. And that's like big deal.
Speaker 9: I mean, you know, And then you can just shrug
Speaker 9: and say, oh, it's golf. That's as good as you get.
Speaker 9: But you really are helping to improve a lot of
Speaker 9: people physically and mentally. You might throw in some fitness stuff,
Speaker 9: you might improve their clubs and get them to play better.
Speaker 9: Whatever you do, you're contributing to someone's life. And with
Speaker 9: all that the planet has faced with the pandemic and
Speaker 9: then war and this and that you make people feel
Speaker 9: happy and confident in themselves. That's a big deal, I think.
Speaker 4: And with that we're stopping down. This ends Part one
Speaker 4: of this series on the club pro crisis. In part two,
Speaker 4: which will drop next week, the Shane Ryan story more
Speaker 4: from Chandler, Withington, Cody, Robbins, Brad and Butch, and we
Speaker 4: hear from Susie Whaley. We get to the heart of
Speaker 4: the matter. Is it a work life balance or is
Speaker 4: it an awareness issue or is it both? And how
Speaker 4: did COVID play a factor in where we are today.
Speaker 1: At the university level, you have the PGM programs, which
Speaker 1: is run by the PGA. A lot of good programs
Speaker 1: around the country, have a very good one here at
Speaker 1: the UNLV where I live in Las Vegas. I try
Speaker 1: and do a lot of work with them, but they're
Speaker 1: taught from a manual. They have a Manuel, a teaching manual,
Speaker 1: a business manual, this and that, And they get upset
Speaker 1: with me because I always speak either at their graduations
Speaker 1: or I get him out to my places at once
Speaker 1: a year and talk to and I say, Tom, look
Speaker 1: the first thing you need to do when you graduate
Speaker 1: from this course. And I hold their manual off. I said,
Speaker 1: this is what you're tested on. This manual right here.
Speaker 1: Throw that in the garbage because you're never going to
Speaker 1: use it again because everything in here is cookie cut.
Speaker 6: Put another log on the fire.
Speaker 4: Nobody here is Geptie